7 Best B2B Lead Gen & Sales Intelligence Companies in 2026 (Compared)

B2B lead gen and sales intelligence companies sell the data behind outbound: people, companies, emails, phone numbers and the filters to find them. Developers, RevOps teams and agencies need it as an API. Reps need it as an app.

This list ranks by what the data costs and how you reach it. Every price is a list price with a source and a month. Where a vendor publishes no 1M price, we say so.

The seven: LeadOcean, Apollo, ZoomInfo, Cognism, People Data Labs, Crustdata and Lusha. We built LeadOcean, so check our claims against the linked pages. For newer entrants, see the most innovative B2B lead gen and sales intelligence tools.

TL;DR

What we evaluated

• Cost at volume. What 1M records a month cost at list price, from the vendor's own pricing page. "No public 1M price" when none exists.
• API access and limits. Whether the API is on every plan, the rate limit and any gate on contact data.
• MCP support. Whether the vendor runs an official hosted MCP server, and what it costs to use.
• Data size and contact coverage. Records held, with emails and phones, as the vendor states them.
• Fit for the buyer. Whether the product is an app for reps or a data layer for code. We say which.

1. LeadOcean: best for API, agent and volume pulls

LeadOcean is a data layer, not a workspace. It holds 693M people (366M with an email, 166M with a phone) and 67M companies. You reach them over REST, a hosted MCP server and an Exports page in the app (LeadOcean pricing, October 2026). There are 50 people filters and 34 company filters.

The price is flat. Free is 1,000 records for life with no card, and Solo is $97 a month. Agency is $497 a month with 1M enrichments a day and 25M search records a month, and both can be raised. Paid plans have a fair-use pace, not credits, so there is no per-record price and no overage invoice.

Sizing is free. GET /v1/companies/count and the MCP tool leadocean_count_companies count a company list before you spend a record, and one search pages to 10,000 rows. Person enrich (POST /v1/people/enrich) returns career history: past roles, education, certifications and awards.

Pros

• Flat public price. Agency is $497 a month at 1M records and at 25M.
• REST and MCP on every plan, Free included, with 13 MCP tools and OAuth 2.1 sign-in.
• Free counts, so a list is sized before it is bought.
• Email status on every record, with 13 values from verified to spam_trap.
• Rate limit per plan: 5 requests a second on Free, 50 on Solo, 200 on Agency.

Cons

• No rep workspace: no sequences, dialer, CRM or Chrome extension. You bring your own sequencer.
• No intent data or buying signals.
• Bulk CSV export is not on Free.
• A bounced email is not refunded, so read email_status before sending.

Best for: engineers, RevOps teams and agents that pull data in volume and want a fixed bill.

Pricing: Free $0, Solo $97, Agency $497, Platform $1,997 a month (LeadOcean pricing, October 2026).

2. Apollo: best for reps who want data and outreach in one app

Apollo is an all-in-one sales platform: a contact database, sequences, a dialer and a Chrome extension. It is priced per seat with a credit allowance, and its Free plan gives 75 credits a month (Apollo pricing, September 2026).

For API buyers the seat model is the cost. Basic is $65 per seat monthly with 2,500 credits, Professional is $99 with 4,000, and Organization is $149 with 6,000 and a three-seat minimum. An email is 1 credit, a phone number is 8, and credits expire at the end of each cycle (Apollo API pricing, September 2026).

At 1M work-email lookups a month, the cheapest path is 250 Professional seats: $24,750 a month. Billed yearly, 400 Basic seats come to $19,600 a month. Add-on credit prices are not public.

Pros

• A full workspace: sequences, dialer, inbox, Chrome extension.
• API access on every plan, Free included, with enrichment at 1,000 requests a minute on paid plans.
• Official MCP server at mcp.apollo.io/mcp, available on any plan (Apollo MCP docs, September 2026).
• A usable free plan for one seller.

Cons

• Per-seat pricing, so a pipeline that no rep opens still pays for seats.
• Credits expire each cycle, and add-on credits renew until removed.
• General API endpoints are limited to 200 requests a minute on Basic and Professional.

Best for: sales teams that want one workspace for prospecting and outreach.

Pricing: Free; Basic $65, Professional $99, Organization $149 per seat a month, or $49, $79 and $119 billed yearly (Apollo pricing, September 2026).

3. ZoomInfo: best for enterprise teams on a sales-led contract

ZoomInfo is the enterprise suite. Its platform plans are sold through sales, and zoominfo.com/pricing blocked our fetch, so this page quotes no platform price.

The part you can price is GTM AI, ZoomInfo's API and MCP product. It sells data credits pay as you go from $20 with no contract and no seat fee. A credit is $0.45 at 100 credits, $0.38 at the $1,000 tier and $0.25 at 100,000 credits ($25,000), and search and lookup are free (GTM AI pricing, September 2026). The free tier gives 1,000 data credits and 1,000 AI credits with no card.

The slider stops at 100,000 credits. Past that is Enterprise, so there is no public 1M price.

Pros

• ZoomInfo claims 100M+ companies and 500M+ contacts behind its MCP server.
• GTM AI has a free tier with API, MCP and CLI access.
• Official MCP server that works with Claude, ChatGPT and Cursor (GTM AI MCP docs, September 2026).
• Search, lookup and find-similar are free on GTM AI.

Cons

• Platform prices are not public.
• API rate limit is 5 requests a second on the free tier and Builder package, 25 on Standard (GTM AI rate limits, September 2026).
• The MCP server needs a GTM AI account or a ZoomInfo subscription with data credits.

Best for: enterprise GTM teams that buy a suite on a sales-led contract.

Pricing: GTM AI credits from $0.45 down to $0.25 each (GTM AI pricing, September 2026); platform plans by quote.

4. Cognism: best for phone-verified mobile contacts

Cognism is a sales intelligence platform built around phone-verified mobiles. Its Diamond Data page claims over 10m phone-verified contacts and Do Not Call checks in 15 territories (Cognism Diamond Data, September 2026). Pro adds on-demand mobile verification and intent data.

It publishes no dollar price. The pricing page lists Standard and Pro plans with five seats each, plus a CRM enrichment add-on. It says pricing is tailored to product, team setup and usage (Cognism pricing, September 2026). One credit reveals one contact. No credit price or allocation is published, so there is no 1M price.

The API takes 500 requests a minute per account, per operation. Search pages run to 100 records, and cursor pagination runs to 100,000 records per journey (Cognism rate limits, September 2026). API and MCP access need a package that includes them.

Pros

• Strong on phone-verified mobiles, with on-demand verification.
• Official MCP server with 15 tools, OAuth 2.0 sign-in (Cognism MCP docs, September 2026).
• A documented API with a 34-field filter schema across people and companies.

Cons

• No public dollar price at any volume.
• Seats and credits both gate a reveal.
• API and MCP depend on your package.
• Search tokens are charged per record returned, on top of credits.

Best for: outbound teams whose reps call mobiles every day.

Pricing: quote only; Standard and Pro, five seats each (Cognism pricing, September 2026).

5. People Data Labs: best for developers who want a profile API or dataset licences

People Data Labs (PDL) is a developer-first data company. Its person dataset holds 2,466,510,427 profiles, 592,376,573 with an email (PDL datasets, September 2026). It also sells dataset files.

Person data starts free at up to 100 credits a month with contact data obscured. Pro starts at $98 a month for 350 credits, which is $0.28 a credit. PDL says Pro profiles cost about $0.20 to $0.28 each depending on volume (PDL pricing, September 2026). Self-serve stops near 100,000 profiles, then it is Enterprise. There is no public 1M price.

Rate limits differ by endpoint. Person enrichment allows 1,000 requests a minute on paying plans, but person search allows 10 a minute by default (PDL usage limits, September 2026).

Pros

• Large, well-documented datasets and bulk file delivery.
• Requests that return nothing (404) are not billed.
• Bulk enrichment takes up to 100 persons per request.
• Pro volume rates fall to about $0.20 a profile.

Cons

• The free plan obscures emails and phones, so you cannot test the data you will pay for.
• Person search is limited to 10 requests a minute by default.
• No official MCP server. Only community wrappers exist.

Best for: developers building on a profile API, or teams that license data into a warehouse.

Pricing: Free; Pro from $98 a month for 350 credits ($78 a month billed yearly); Enterprise by quote (PDL pricing, September 2026).

6. Crustdata: best for live web data and change alerts

Crustdata is a data API with its own index of people, companies, jobs and posts, sold on credits. It does things a static database does not: watchers that alert you when a person or company changes, and live endpoints (Crustdata pricing docs, September 2026).

It lists no plan names and no dollar price per credit. Search is 0.03 credits per result, and person enrich is 1 to 7 credits (base profile 1, business email +1, personal email +2, phone +2). A work-email lookup costs 2 credits on self-serve keys. Credits bought expire 12 months after purchase. There is no public 1M price.

Default limits are low: 15 requests a minute on person and company enrich, and 30 on search (Crustdata rate limits, September 2026). The contact enrich endpoint needs an enterprise plan, and self-serve keys get a 403.

Pros

• Change watchers and live endpoints for fresh data.
• Hosted MCP server with OAuth sign-in (Crustdata MCP docs, September 2026).
• Search is cheap per result at 0.03 credits.

Cons

• No public dollar price or plan table.
• Default rate limits are 15 to 30 requests a minute.
• The cheapest email path (1 credit) is enterprise only.
• Coverage claims on the homepage conflict, with 60M and 200M+ companies both stated.

Best for: teams that need fresh signals and job-change alerts, not just a static list.

Pricing: credits with no public dollar price (Crustdata pricing docs, September 2026).

7. Lusha: best for individual reps using a browser extension

Lusha sells contact data on credits through an app, an extension, an API and MCP. It has the lowest paid entry here for a single seller. Free is 40 credits a month. Starter is $49.90 a month for 400 credits, or $37.45 billed yearly (Lusha pricing, September 2026).

Credits drive the cost. An email is 1 credit and a phone number is 5, and a bulk request adds 1 credit per 25 results. The top public tier is Premium at 10,000 credits a month, $977.40 billed monthly. A 1M work-email pull is about 1,040,000 credits, over 100 times that tier, so there is no public 1M price (Lusha API guide, September 2026).

Free and Starter keys allow 40 requests a minute and 100 a day. Premium allows 300 a minute.

Pros

• The cheapest paid entry here, at $49.90 a month.
• A browser extension next to the web app.
• Official MCP server with 50 tools (Lusha MCP docs, September 2026).
• An API key on every plan, Free included.

Cons

• Small plans have small API limits: 100 requests a day on Free and Starter.
• Credits expire at the end of yearly cycles.
• Lusha's docs disagree on whether a request that finds nothing costs a credit.
• Bulk calls stop at 100 records, so a 1M pull is 10,000 calls.

Best for: individual reps and small teams on a small budget.

Pricing: Free; Starter $49.90, Pro $69.90, Premium $399.90 a month, or $37.45, $52.45 and $299.95 billed yearly (Lusha pricing, September 2026).

Comparison table

How to choose

• You pull data through an API, an agent or in bulk: LeadOcean, then People Data Labs if you want dataset files.
• You want reps to prospect and send in one app: Apollo. Add LeadOcean when seat costs outgrow the data you use.
• You are an enterprise team that buys a full suite: ZoomInfo, on a sales-led contract.
• Your reps call mobiles all day: Cognism.
• You need change alerts and live web data: Crustdata.
• You are one rep on a small budget: Lusha or Apollo Free.
• You must forecast a 1M-record bill before talking to anyone: only LeadOcean and Apollo publish enough to do it.

Verdict

LeadOcean wins for anyone who calls data by API or through an agent. It is the only option here with a flat public price at 1M records and a free way to size a list first. Apollo wins for reps who want one app for data and outreach, and for teams that already live in it. ZoomInfo wins for enterprises that buy a suite. Cognism wins for phone-led outbound. People Data Labs wins for developers who want profile files, and Crustdata wins when freshness matters more than price. Lusha wins for a single seller on a small budget.

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